ChrisPappas
New Member
Every time I boot my Gateway notebook, the Recently Opened Programs list, the list of programs you see when you hit the start button keeps, getting overwritten with factory items. I've right clicked on each of them and selected "Remove from this list" and went about my business using other programs, which are added to the list as normal. Upon reboot, all my recent programs are gone, and Gateway's programs are back.
Two of them were AOL and NetZero entries. Neither of these programs were ever installed and each of these entries would keep returning. For these, I deleted the folders that they pointed to, but they still came back, only with dead shortcuts. I found that if I deleted the shortcuts from the All Program's submenus, that they stayed gone.
The others are mostly Windows items and I don't necessarily want to erradicate the programs, I just want them off the list. I went so far as to track where the list entries live in the registry. They are encrypted within two keys:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist\{75048700-EF1F-11D0-9888-006097DEACF9}\Count]
and
[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1606599666-4217557356-1531273167-1000\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist\{75048700-EF1F-11D0-9888-006097DEACF9}\Count]
Weird encryption too. All the characters are shifted by 13 characters, i.e., a=n, b=o, c=p, z=m, etc. "Windows" is spelled "Jvaqbjf". Anyhow, I deleted the keys and they come back again on reboot.
Does anyone know how I can stop this behavior without turning off the Recently used Programs list altogether?
Thanks,
Chris
Two of them were AOL and NetZero entries. Neither of these programs were ever installed and each of these entries would keep returning. For these, I deleted the folders that they pointed to, but they still came back, only with dead shortcuts. I found that if I deleted the shortcuts from the All Program's submenus, that they stayed gone.
The others are mostly Windows items and I don't necessarily want to erradicate the programs, I just want them off the list. I went so far as to track where the list entries live in the registry. They are encrypted within two keys:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist\{75048700-EF1F-11D0-9888-006097DEACF9}\Count]
and
[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1606599666-4217557356-1531273167-1000\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist\{75048700-EF1F-11D0-9888-006097DEACF9}\Count]
Weird encryption too. All the characters are shifted by 13 characters, i.e., a=n, b=o, c=p, z=m, etc. "Windows" is spelled "Jvaqbjf". Anyhow, I deleted the keys and they come back again on reboot.
Does anyone know how I can stop this behavior without turning off the Recently used Programs list altogether?
Thanks,
Chris
